Tribute to Our Gig Bag (And How We Improvise Every Day)

We are improvisers. So we're used to handling situations on the fly. We adapt. We course-correct. We change. It happens all of the time in our show and not surprisingly that ethos makes its way into the real world. (Which explains why we teach so many improv workshops to non-improvisers)

A crazy example of our having to spring into action unexpectedly occurred during a recent tour out West.

A little background, when we travel to a town there is not a lot of extra time. If the show is on a Friday we'll travel and arrive in that town at some point on Thursday, start tech around 3pm on Friday, and then head out on Saturday morning - either to our next destination or back to New York. (Note how we are in each town for two breakfasts. This is why we're always asking you after the show and on Twitter where the good places to have breakfast are.)

So time is tight even when everything goes according to plan.

In February we had a show in Medford, OR and then another show two days later in Modesto, CA. in between the two shows, our "Gig Bag" got stolen. All of our props, costumes, wigs, merchandise, even our Phony Award was lost.

Imagine you're in a new town you've never been to with a few hours to completely rebuild something you've been building for years.

Needless to say, you've got to start improvising. And that's what our cast and crew in Modesto did.

Here's a video we put together about what happened in our own words. We like to think of it as a tribute to Gig Bag.

Costumes become a big part of the second act of our show. What are some stand out, insane costumes that we wore when you saw our show? Leave a comment below to tell it (we'll try to dig out the picks from our archives)